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John Marshall

The Man Who Made the Supreme Court

By Richard Brookhiser

Hardback

£25.00

The life of John Marshall, Founding Father and America's longest-serving Chief Justice, who made the Supreme Court a force to be reckoned with in the new nation

In 1801, a 45-year-old Revolutionary War veteran and politician, slovenly, genial, brilliant, and persuasive, became the fourth chief justice of the United States, a post he would hold for a record thirty-four years. Before John Marshall joined the Court, the judicial branch was viewed as the poor sister of the federal government, lacking in dignity and clout. After his passing, the Supreme Court of the United States would never be ignored again. John Marshall is award-winning and bestselling author Richard Brookhiser's definitive biography of America's longest-serving Chief Justice.

Marshall (1755-1835) was born in Northern Virginia and served as a captain during the Revolutionary War and then as a delegate to the Virginia state convention. He was a friend and admirer of George Washington, and a cousin and enemy of Thomas Jefferson. His appointment to the Supreme Court came almost by chance-Adams saw him as the last viable option, after previous appointees declined the nomination. Yet he took to the court immediately, turning his sharp mind toward strengthening America's fragile legal order.

Americans had inherited from their colonial past a deep distrust of judges as creatures of arbitrary royal power; in reaction, newly independent states made them pawns of legislative whim. The result was legal caprice, sometimes amounting to chaos. Marshall wanted a strong federal judiciary, led by the Supreme Court, to define laws, protect rights, and balance the power of the legislative and executive branches. However, America's legal system, he believed, was threatened by specific individuals-namely Thomas Jefferson and the early Republican Party-who were intent on undermining the Constitution and respect for law in order to empower themselves.

As a Federalist and a follower of Washington and Hamilton, he also wanted a strong national government, favorable to business. In his three decades on the court, Marshall accomplished just that. As Brookhiser vividly relates, in a string of often-colorful cases involving businessmen, educators, inventors, scoundrels, Native Americans, and slaves, Marshall clipped the power of the states vis-à-vis the federal government, established the Supreme Court's power to correct or rebuke Congress or the president, and bolstered commerce and contracts. John Marshall's modus operandi was charm and wit, frequently uniting his fellow justices around unanimous decisions in even the most controversial cases. For better and for worse, he made the Supreme Court a central part of American life.

John Marshall is the definitive biography of America's greatest judge and most important early Chief Justice.

Biographical Notes

Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and the author of twelve books, including Founder's Son: A Life of Abraham Lincoln; Alexander Hamilton; American; and Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington. He lives in New York City.

Other details

ISBN:
9780465096220

Publication date:
13 Dec 2018

Page count:
336

Imprint:
Basic Books

Hachette Books

From Broken Glass

Brian Wallace, Glenn Frank, Steve Ross

Authors:

Brian Wallace, Glenn Frank, Steve Ross

From the survivor of ten Nazi concentration camps who went on to create the New England Holocaust Memorial, a "devastating...inspirational" memoir (The Today Show) about finding strength in the face of despair.On August 14, 2017, two days after a white-supremacist activist rammed his car into a group of anti-Fascist protestors, killing one and injuring nineteen, the New England Holocaust Memorial was vandalized for the second time in as many months. At the base of one of its fifty-four-foot glass towers lay a pile of shards. For Steve Ross, the image called to mind Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass in which German authorities ransacked Jewish-owned buildings with sledgehammers.Ross was eight years old when the Nazis invaded his Polish village, forcing his family to flee. He spent his next six years in a day-to-day struggle to survive the notorious camps in which he was imprisoned, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Dachau among them. When he was finally liberated, he no longer knew how old he was, he was literally starving to death, and everyone in his family except for his brother had been killed.Ross learned in his darkest experiences--by observing and enduring inconceivable cruelty as well as by receiving compassion from caring fellow prisoners--the human capacity to rise above even the bleakest circumstances. He decided to devote himself to underprivileged youth, aiming to ensure that despite the obstacles in their lives they would never experience suffering like he had. Over the course of a nearly forty-year career as a psychologist working in the Boston city schools, that was exactly what he did. At the end of his career, he spearheaded the creation of the New England Holocaust Memorial, a site millions of people including young students visit every year.Equal parts heartrending, brutal, and inspiring, From Broken Glass is the story of how one man survived the unimaginable and helped lead a new generation to forge a more compassionate world.

Churchill & Smuts

Richard Steyn

Commander in Cheat

Rick Reilly

Authors:

Rick Reilly

Rick Reilly transports readers onto the golf course with President Trump, revealing the absurd ways in which he lies about his feats and what they can tell us about the way he leads off the course in the most important job in the world. Reilly has hit rounds with Trump, interviewed several of Trump's caddies, and tracked down dozens of others who have golfed beside the man, reporting their accounts of the most outlandish antics they've observed on the course. Among them, this book reveals:His outrageous cheating behaviorWhy Trump got punched out on the 9th hole at Winged Foot, NY (he was caught cheating)Stories from contractors whom Trump refused to pay after they had completed their workHow Trump has gotten himself in trouble on rounds with world leadersPrivate courses he's applied to which have refused himHow Trump uses the presidency to sell golf memberships to his clubsThe disrespectful ways Trump treats women on the course, at golf tournaments, and in his clubsHilarious and troubling, COMMANDER IN CHEAT is an indictment of Trump's character.

Congo Stories

John Prendergast, Fidel Bafilemba, Sam Ilus

Keeping At It

Paul A. Volcker, Christine Harper

Authors:

Paul A. Volcker, Christine Harper

Paul Volcker has devoted his life's work to public service and the critical importance of open, disciplined and efficient government. As chairman of the Federal Reserve (1979-1987) he literally rescued the American economy from destroying itself, summoning the courage to take radical and controversial steps to slay the inflation dragon. And whenever the going got really tough--the financial crash of 2008, the need to reform banking, the oil for food UN scandal, the turmoil in Switzerland over theft of Holocaust victims, cheating in Major League Baseball--US presidents and other leaders said to "get Volcker in here to help me work this thing through."Told with wit, humor, and down-to-earth erudition, Volcker's memoir brings to life the changes that have taken place in American life, government, and the economy since World War II. Readers will of course find his penetrating insight into the strengths, weaknesses, and foibles of presidents, chancellors, and finance ministers of great interest. But the person who stands above all and resonates most is his father, the town manager of Teaneck, N.J.--Volcker's role model throughout his life of the critical importance of good government and the absolute need for dedicated, experienced public servants to competently lead us through the changes that await us in our lifetime.

Where You Go

Charlotte Pence

Authors:

Charlotte Pence

Through stories intimately illustrating our vice president's character as a devoted family man, Christian, and public servant, Charlotte Pence both honors her father and shares how his wisdom has impacted her life.Charlotte offers the most important lessons she has learned by her father's example of love, loyalty, and faith, and through the challenges and triumphs she has shared with her family, some of which are fascinatingly specific to those in politics.She recounts the incredible moments of hope and adversity her family experienced during 100 days on the Trump-Pence campaign trail, the touching times she helped her dad prepare for debates, and why she always knew that their journey would be victorious.With thoughtful and vivid insights, Charlotte pays tribute to Mike Pence, the dreamer who encourages her to be the same, and gives a unique glimpse into their life, which will uplift and inspire.

The Rise of Andrew Jackson

David S. Heidler, Jeanne T. Heidler

Dr. Benjamin Rush

Harlow Giles Unger

Authors:

Harlow Giles Unger

Dr. Benjamin Rush was the Founding Father of an America that other Founding Fathers forgot or ignored--an America of women, African-Americans, Jews, Quakers, Roman Catholics, indentured workers, and the poor. Ninety percent of the people lived in that other America, but none could vote and none had rights to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness, either before or after independence from Britain. Alone among the Founding Fathers who signed the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Rush heard their cries and stepped forth as the nation's first great humanitarian and social reformer.Known primarily as America's most influential and leading physician, Rush was also among the first to call for the abolition of slavery, equal rights for women, free education and health care for the poor, slum clearance, city-wide sanitation facilities, an end to child labor, universal public education, humane treatment and therapy for the insane, prison reform, an end to capital punishment, and improved medical care for injured troops. Using archival material found in Edinburgh, London, and Paris, as well as significant new materials from Rush's descendants recently made available, Harlow Giles Unger's startling biography of Benjamin Rush is the first in more than a decade.Dr. Benjamin Rush is an important biography of the Founding Father who never forgot America's forgotten people.

The Man Who Walked Backward

Ben Montgomery

Authors:

Ben Montgomery

Like most Americans at the time, Plennie Wingo was hit hard by the effects of the Great Depression. When the bank foreclosed on his small restaurant in Abilene, he found himself suddenly penniless with nowhere left to turn. After months of struggling to feed his family on wages he earned digging ditches in the Texas sun, Plennie decided it was time to do something extraordinary -- something to resurrect the spirit of adventure and optimism he felt he'd lost. He decided to walk around the world -- backwards. In The Man Who Walked Backward, Pulitzer Prize finalist Ben Montgomery charts Plennie's backwards trek across the America that gave rise to Woody Guthrie, John Steinbeck, and the New Deal. With the Dust Bowl and Great Depression as a backdrop, Montgomery follows Plennie across the Atlantic through Germany, Bucharest, Turkey, and beyond, and details the daring physical feats, grueling hardships, comical misadventures, and hostile foreign police he encountered along the way. A remarkable and quirky slice of Americana, The Man Who Walked Backward paints a rich and vibrant portrait of a jaw-dropping period of history.

From Broken Glass

Steve Ross, Glenn Frank, Brian Wallace

Barney Greatrex

Michael Veitch

The Last 100 Days

David B. Woolner

Authors:

David B. Woolner

A revealing portrait of the end of Franklin Roosevelt's life and presidency, shedding new light on how he made his momentous final policy decisionsThe first hundred days of FDR's presidency are justly famous, a period of political action without equal in American history. Yet as historian David B. Woolner reveals, the last hundred might very well surpass them in drama and consequence.Drawing on new evidence, Woolner shows how FDR called on every ounce of his diminishing energy to pursue what mattered most to him: the establishment of the United Nations, the reinvigoration of the New Deal, and the possibility of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. We see a president shorn of the usual distractions of office, a man whose sense of personal responsibility for the American people bore heavily upon him. As Woolner argues, even in declining health FDR displayed remarkable political talent and foresight as he focused his energies on shaping the peace to come.

Marching with the Devil

David Mason

Authors:

David Mason

'An unpretentious Aussie's experiences in one of the most ramshackle and soul-destroying military organisations on Earth.' COURIER-MAILA real-life boy's own adventure, MARCHING WITH THE DEVIL is a hell-raising account of five years in the infamous French Foreign Legion.'In 1894 a French Foreign Legion General said, "Legionnaires, vous etes faits pour mourir, je vous envoie la ou on meurt." Legionnaires, you are made for dying, I will send you where you can die. When I was in my mid-teens and first read those words they were powerful and confronting. I read them as a challenge and an invitation. The words, and the feelings they evoked, remained with me until I was ready. On 20 May 1988, I enlisted in the French Foreign Legion.'Searching for something he wasn't finding in his life in Australia, David Mason joined the French Foreign Legion. This is a frank account of how Mason came first in basic training, trained other Legionnaires, went to Africa, did sniper, commando and medic training and took part in two operations, both in the Republic of Djibouti where a civil war nearly crippled the nation. It tells of his daily life in the Legion, in the training regiment, in Africa and with the Legion's Parachute Regiment. But more than this: it reveals his disillusionment, frustration and disappointment with the much mythologised Legion, and how the Legion today is not what it seems - or could be. Now part of the HACHETTE MILITARY COLLECTION.'Remarkable' THE AGE

Killer Caldwell

Jeffrey Watson

Authors:

Jeffrey Watson

Clive 'Killer' Caldwell was a natural and brilliant pilot, a superb shot, and a born leader. He saw action against the Germans, Italians and Japanese, and remains Australia's greatest ever fighter pilot - this is his definitive biography.Born and brought up in Sydney, it was obvious from an early age that nothing would stand in Caldwell's way. He bluffed his way into the RAAF, then made sure that he was posted exactly where he thought he should be.His ability was unquestioned by all those around him, and he devised the vital 'shadow shooting' technique which contributed so much to Allied success in the air in the North African campaign, and in northern Australia. But he was never afraid of voicing his opinions to all those above and below him, be it about the training of pilots, or the equipping of Spitfires for use against the Japanese - or trying to run the show his way.Caldwell ended his military career in the Morotai Mutiny in 1945, where he and a number of other Australian pilots tried to resign their commissions in protest at not being allowed by General MacArthur - and the RAAF - to take part in the main action. And then he was embroiled in the Barry inquiry into booze smuggling by him and other pilots. KILLER CALDWELL is a colourful portrait of this colourful Australian. Now part of the HACHETTE MILITARY COLLECTION.'an outstanding airman and a popular national hero.' Australian War Memorial

Bumper: The Life and Times of Frank 'Bumper' Farrell

Larry Writer

Goddess of Anarchy

Jacqueline Jones

Sisters First

Jenna Bush Hager, Barbara Pierce Bush

Authors:

Jenna Bush Hager, Barbara Pierce Bush

Born into a political dynasty, Jenna and Barbara Bush grew up in the public eye. As small children, they watched their grandfather become president; just twelve years later they stood by their father's side when he took the same oath. They spent their college years being trailed by the Secret Service and chased by the paparazzi, with every teenage mistake making national headlines. But the tabloids didn't tell the whole story of these two young women forging their own identities under extraordinary circumstances. In this book they take readers on a revealing, thoughtful, and deeply personal tour behind the scenes of their lives, with never-before-told stories about their family, their adventures, their loves and losses, and the special sisterly bond that fulfills them